Love Be Brave
by land of a thousand words
Summary: "I am brave and love is sweet / and silence speaks for him and me." – 'Love Be Brave,' Laura Marling Vaguely smutty S6 AU.


Notes: _This is the fifth of 6 one-shots that I've already posted to Ao3. Originally posted 11/15/2013._

This immediately follows 6x02, and then goes pretty AU (it'd have to). I was prompted by the lovely Zagzagael to write a smut-filled one-shot after a brief discussion about how I'm terrible at it. No guarantees that this'll be the best PWP of your life (especially because I had to put in a _teensy_ bit of plot, I couldn't help it), but maybe it'll rev your engine like, a tad. Let us pray.

* * *

Sometimes her skin felt armor-plated and she would have a particularly difficult time trying to find the words to explain the "when." _When did my hide become so thick? Was it you_, she would think, squinting at the back of her husband's head as if it were a math equation, _did __**you**__ do this to me?_ There were times when the touch of another person, even at the hands of those closest to her, felt like a violation, but she still had too much heart to tell them so.

Lying stiff in her husband's arms after her return home was a suffocating, cringing intimacy; she would remember Kohn in his touch and unconsciously revel in the memory of firing that bullet into his abdomen. There was a time when she would have never thought to compare the two. Kohn had been a monster, and Jackson Teller the man who had defeated him. She was staggered by the very thought – by the realization that the person she now called her husband was of a different kind than the boy she had known in high school, the man he had become in his trials at the whims of the club.

She let her fingers drift wearily down his back, a gentle caress down the face of the reaper inked onto his skin as if she were seducing her own death. She had consented to his kiss and assented to his ministrations but her heart had shriveled in fear and a whimpering passivity ran scared to the core of her very bones. She lay in the arms of her husband but felt as if she were the victim in the embrace of her murderer, trapped beneath him but suffering at the whims of herself, engaging his behaviors but only because it had been what she always did; in the past it had never even been a question.

"I love you," he whispered, holding her tightly. His arms squeezed like a vice around her, the sweatiness of his skin, and the smell of their sex a claustrophobic nightmare. She had consciously stilled to keep from shuddering, only to offer a shaky smile in the darkness.

—

Hospitals could generally be regarded as an altogether hated place. If you could avoid going, whether it was for your own health, or to visit the bedside of a sick friend or relative, it was meant to be avoided at all costs. It was just the nature of the place, filled to the brim with bad news; especially in a place like Charming. Tara supposed she was different, like many of her fellow surgeons the hospital was a second home to her, it was where she knew exactly who she was, as opposed to everywhere else, when she just couldn't seem to decide.

It was unusually quiet that day, she would have preferred the usual noise and chaos to the thought-inducing silence; to the flashbacks of the previous evening, and the heaviness resting on her torso as if she still lay powerless on her back, trying to salvage the love that she had lost in her cell, surrounded by the women who had seemingly given her all their loneliness, anger, and regret. _I will not be like you_, she thought as the freshly healed bones of her hand screamed in protest; her knuckles scraping against a nameless face. She wasn't so vulnerable the next morning, at least less so than she had been the day before, but it was only an unexpected perk. If the right person had asked, maybe if _he_ had asked, she would have said, _"It was me. I was only trying to fight myself."_

Thinking of him summoned him to her, as if he were a spirit; his presence lived on the wind and all she had to do was envision his face, hear his voice in her head, and he would appear before her, silent and waiting.

It was the smell that had caught her attention, she had been gazing listlessly out the window trying to keep her thoughts from drifting when she had sighed and inhaled, and the sweet smell of leather, the acrid sting of tobacco invaded her senses and she gasped. Her exhalation was loud and disbelieving; as if she had cast a spell and was having a hard time comprehending that it has _worked_. She called and he came.

When he was before her at last, when he ceased to simply be an idea or a sensory perception and she could take him in with her eyes, he was disarmingly nervous. She had never seen him act _nervous_ before, not in all the months before her arrest when they had stumbled into friendship, into a silent flirtation that she would only entertain in her moments of solitude, and in prison she had certainly had enough of that. There was more than enough time to stew and marinate in all of his delightful possibilities; in an "older man" fetish that super imposed itself upon the "high school sweetheart" timeline she had followed with Jax, that had been filled with missteps, alcohol, and morning after pills.

He had his gloves twisted between his hands, so tight it looked as if they had been wrung to nothing in his fists.

"Where are the boys?"

"Daycare," she responded quickly, hoping to dissuade him of the notion that she had been unnerved by his presence, hesitant to speak.

"I know how hard it can be," he said softly, "after your first time gettin' out."

The lump in her throat made swallowing difficult so she smiled; tried to amicably take his concern and put it next to all of the other advice she had downed in the last few days.

His words had always seemed important to her. It was a skill she envied, to give your words such power, to choose them so carefully that every little thing you uttered would be taken for exactly what it was. When he spoke he gave nothing away; nearer to the arrest and quite soon after she started to realize what a gift it was – how important words were, how she needed to be much,_ much_ better than she was.

Maybe she could steal them. Maybe if he breathed into her and she inhaled his words, his stoicism, maybe she could save them. Save all of them.

When she took a step towards him he stopped speaking, his grip tightened around his gloves and they squeaked quietly in displeasure. She tried to envision it, she had learned in medical school, visualizing what you wanted tended to make the actual execution easier, as if thinking hard enough could actually make it happen.

_Kiss him_, she thought, _before you change your mind._

There was a vague notion of the act, of her hands against the scruff of his beard, the brushing of her hips against his so there could be no doubt as to what she was after. But the way he looked at her, suspicious and intrigued all at once; no curious, questioning look that Jax always seemed to have, so little experience compared to _him_, still so reliant on the guidance of others, of his mother; his wife.

Her hands shook only slightly, placing them over his to pry his fingers from his gloves, tossing them carelessly onto her desk.

"What are you thinking about?" she whispered, and unsurprisingly he didn't answer; one corner of his mouth only quirked slightly and there was a tightening in her abdomen, a familiar sensation that seemed to peak out from wherever it had been hiding the evening before.

There was a sound of shoes scuffling outside her door and she froze, ripping her gaze from his eyes to stare panicked at the door over his shoulder; just waiting for Gemma or Margaret to come breezing through, coming to their own conclusions and throwing her entire barely-there existence into complete disarray.

—

He was roughly kissing her before she could speak, utter her doubts, make an excuse, and choke out a laugh that had begun to sound more like a sob than anything else. Her recent kisses with Jax couldn't have been described as anything other than mournful, a dissolution of their intimacy. _These_ kisses were _alive_; she felt her flesh awaken, and her lips thrummed against his before she could think to stop them.

Gone was the infuriating passivity of the previous evening, an exhausted stillness that had seemingly taken everything, yet asked for nothing.

_Ask_, his touch spoke, _ask, take, devour._

She whimpered his name, foregoing the morbid nickname for the soft "F" and the "p" that barely popped at the end, lost in the breathy sound of her voice. His name between her lips had him growling and pushing, walking her quickly backwards towards the wall at the other end of her office, the banging of their bodies against the hard surface causing her various degrees and photos to rattle in protest.

His words leaked against her breathy sighs and she tried to swallow them, her tongue slipping out from between her teeth.

"Wha' do I do here, darlin'?"

_Exactly this. Just this._

Her hands went for his jacket, no visualization needed, grasping and tugging she had forgotten about the damage done to her hand and winced in pain, a small gasp escaping from between her lips. He paused, pulling away, a questioning look on his face; so full of worry that there was a physical ache in her heart, worse than the pain pulsing in her arm, and a small part of her paused to wonder if this would be it, if she would really be able to give him this, give him herself, and then that would be it. Back to her husband, back to waiting for their real life to start.

"It's nothing," she said shakily, "I'm fine."

The pain ebbed relentlessly; she saw the doubtfulness in his expression but silently urged his ignorance, prayed for the conversation to end and the mind-numbing touches to continue. His eyes were gazing longingly at the skin of her throat, but she felt his hand agonizingly slowly grasp her injured arm, it was such a gentle touch that she couldn't even begin to fathom how he had been gripping his gloves so tightly only moments ago.

"Please," she breathed. Affectionate touches were the opposite of what this was about, she felt the urge to cry welling up familiarly at the back of her throat and she felt herself begging. _Please. _

His lips were against her throat and she nearly sobbed with relief; a quiet moan that motivated his less affectionate gestures. She felt a twinge between her legs and grabbed his face between both hands, pulling his lips towards hers, a building desire to feel him against her making her sloppy and wanting.

There was a certain poignancy to the feeling of his hands suddenly gripping her thighs, the muscles straining beneath the skin of his forearms, supporting her weight. In the sudden slowness of his kisses she felt not only the strength of his body, his ability to carry her flesh, but the cradling of her soul – wounded and restless she forgot the gift she had sought to steal, and received only the strength he so willingly bestowed. In the awkward, barely dressed moments before their consummation she noted a vulnerable eagerness in his expression, and vowed to keep it safe, no matter the consequences of their time together.

She was a thief no longer; instead a recipient of his unexpected generosity and a guardian of his secrets.

Revealed to him, she felt, in spite all of her many scars – both beautiful and dangerous – the hungriness in his gaze had her impatient and lust-ridden, smiling into the heat-filled space between their rapturous gasps. Somewhere in the midst of their frantic kisses and giddy groping he had ended up inside of her, slow and passionate, their lips finally parted and she felt his head fall heavy against the side of her own, a relieved sigh blowing warmly against her hair and there was a sudden urge within her to laugh; not bitter or crazed; not closer to a cry, but a genuine sound.

It had him smiling into the crook of her neck, and his kisses there had her ankles tightening and clenching against his waist, his hips swaying and thrusting in a gentle rhythm that kept the pain in her heart at bay.

—

They sat quiet on the floor of her office, without any hint of awkwardness that had been her only fear when he had initially came to see her. He had opened a window (presumably to smoke), and a warm breeze blew against her sweat-dried brow. She smelled a subtle hint of flowers, felt the cooling sensation of the wind on her skin and the heaviness of a long overdue exhaustion washed over her – the feeling as if she were on high-alert suddenly dissipating in their silent epilogue.

Her head fell against his shoulder, and she recalled his tired collapse against her with a thrilled shiver.

"D'ya want me to close it?"

"No," she answered softly, eyes closed, "It's nice."

Anyone else would have been tense, their eyes darting every which way looking for an exit – an escape from their own stupidity. But not him, accepting of his fate as ever, a man perfectly in the know of his own decisions and the consequences, should they follow.

In a regenerative moment of long-awaited rest, there was an idea which developed at the back of her mind, slowly, carefully, and then all at once. She didn't call out, gasp aloud, sit upright and alert, a wide-eyed expression contorting her features – there was only a continued silence, a quiet genius that had her fists clenching in determination.

"I'll be there," he said, a few more words to add to the already steep pile that she had unknowingly begun to collect from their very first conversation.

"Whatever you need."

There was a vague, tap, tap, tapping against the open window and Tara imagined the scraping of a skeletal finger, eager and impatient for her attention. While she had once had it in her mind to court Death, a sly invitation to be at his beck & call for the remainder of her time outside the walls of a prison, now there was only defiance. _Knock all you want_, she thought, listening intently to the sound of his breathing beneath her bones,_ I'll never answer._


End file.
